


Orange

by especiallythezefronposter



Series: Equals [8]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 18:09:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1479196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/especiallythezefronposter/pseuds/especiallythezefronposter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Midgard, Loki isn't as alone as he expected to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orange

**Author's Note:**

> (I usually don't do long notes, but there are a few things I need to get out of the way before we begin this time, so I'm sorry or something.)
> 
> First of all, if you haven't done so yet, you should first read the rest of this series.
> 
> Second, I'm completely ignoring anything that happened in Thor: the Dark world and Captain America: the Winter Soldier and everything that is still happening in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, so S.H.I.E.L.D. is still just S.H.I.E.L.D. and Dark Elves aren't bothering anyone they shouldn't be bothering.
> 
> Also, there will be two original characters in this story and one of them, Tyra, also appeared in 'White' (which is the fourth work in this series). I don't think it's necessary to reread it, but of course that's your choice.  
> I know that lots of people don't like original characters in fanfic, but these two are my babies and they are lovely, promise (and also I ship Tyra with Maria Hill, who gets a guest appearance.) (There is also a tiny Melina May cameo, because she's cool and scary.)
> 
> And one last thing that I should say: this feels completely different from everything I've written for this series before (since it has 3000 words instead of 1000 and (spoiler) doesn't involve Thor (like, at all) or Loki being either very sad or very angry or getting hurt or anything), but I hope you'll still enjoy it.
> 
> (And the end of this fic is a bit of a reference to the ending of 'Brown' (the second fic of this series))
> 
> Okay, okay, I think I'm done now. Enjoy reading!

Loki woke up on a hard, flat surface, orange the only thing he could see. He squinted, trying to let his eyes adjust to brightness without making his headache any worse, if it could be worse. He remembered feeling like that before, after flying into a wall - or maybe it had been a giant... 

He might as well have dreamt it, because if he tried to remember anything in specific - when this had occurred or whom he had been with - he couldn't, the images fleeting and just out of reach.

He tried to look around instead, opening his eyes further and trying to ignore the pain that dug into his skull. A kitchen, he realized after staring at the silvery appliances for over a minute. An orange kitchen. It all felt strange to him, though it was hard to say why. The shiny material the cupboards were made out of was one he didn't know very well, something nature didn't produce herself, and the buzz coming from the light above confused him. He was familiar with lightning, but not with this weaker, concentrated form. He had seen all of it before, but not long enough to get comfortable with it.

'Loki,' a voice said from behind him, starling him. He turned his head to see a woman, dressed in black. She stood there cautiously, but unafraid. 'How are you feeling?', she asked, taking a sip from the mug she was holding.

Loki slowly sat up, wincing when he tried to support himself with his hand and pain shot through his shoulder. He looked down to see he was wearing a white shirt that was too big for him, bandages visible through the fabric. 'live long and prosper,' the shirt said in big black letters, with the outline of a hand with strangely spread fingers between the first two words and the last. He started pulling at the bandages.

The woman, who had simply been waiting for his reaction, set her mug down on the windowsill near her and took a step towards him. 'Hey! Be careful with the shirt, will you. It's the only one I have that's big enough for you, _and_ it's limited edition. Freddy gave it to me. If you rip it you can go explain it to him and do so naked.'

There was a pause, then Loki spoke. 'Where did the... underpants come from?', he asked awkwardly, gesturing at the blue-white-green striped boxers he didn't remember putting on at any point in his life. Not that there was much he _did_ remember.

'Also from Freddy, actually. You're lucky he lives at my house most of the time. Don't worry, they're clean. Fred's a bit of a hygiene freak.' She smiled in a way he recognized, and memories of snow and happy children flashed through his mind, but they were hard to hold on to. 'Feeling better? You're _looking_ better, I suppose. You weren't quite the image of celestial beauty when I found you at the beach, were you. I bet -'

'I know you,' he stated softly, holding the table as he tried to stand. He sat back down again when he realized how much his legs were trembling, not wanting to let this person see how weak he was.

'You do. The name is Tyra, if you'd forgotten that. I'm not saying you did or anything, just freshening things up. You're Loki, by the way. Just Loki, we don't do last names here. Any questions?'

'What happened to me?'

'I don't know. I found you on a beach with a funny outfit and a stab wound in your shoulder. Alcohol, drugs maybe? Someone might've put something in your drink, or this might be a new sick way of harassing people. Don't ask me. What do _you_ remember?'

'Not much.' He looked around. 'Where are we?'

'The United States of America, Washington D.C. It's really not as fancy as it sounds, though. I liked Norway better.'

When she said Norway, snippets of memories attacked his aching head the way he had when she had smiled at him. 'How did we meet?'

'I had been going to the same boring old school my whole life and then suddenly you barged in one day. Everyone had a great time, and then you left again...' She said nothing for a moment, staring at the ground, then she looked back up and smiled. 'Want some breakfast? Or lunch maybe? It's almost twelve AM, so I guess it's up to you. Pancakes or spaghetti?'

Both proposals sounded foreign, so he went with 'Pancakes, please.' and continued his round of questions. 'I wasn't alone, was I? In all of this, even at the beach, someone was with me.'

She sighed and turned away to collect pancake ingredients from what Loki knew was called a fridge. His memory was ridiculously useless like this, supplying only bits of information he didn't need. 'I'm not supposed to tell you anything about that. You can keep whatever memories come back to you, but they won't let me give you any more information. I'm sorry. I don't make the rules.'

She rolled her eyes when her phone went off and didn't check who was calling before picking up, as if she had been expecting someone. She almost smiled as she listened to the voice at the other side of the line and, to his surprise, Loki could hear it, too.

 _'Don't make this any harder on yourself, agent. If you keep mentioning us like that, he'll start asking questions you can't answer,'_ a female voice said sternly.

'What happens if I do answer them?', Tyra asked as she gave Loki a smile and walked out of the kitchen. She closed the door, but he could still hear her and the woman on the phone clearly.

 _'Then you'll remind someone who doesn't remember who he is that he is a mass murderer that tried to destroy New York and he'll do something like that again.'_ Loki recognized the voice vaguely, but, just like everything else, he couldn't precisely remember whose it was or from where he knew it. It occurred to him that the stranger might've just called him a mass murder, but, whatever little he knew about himself, he didn't think he was capable of killing.

'I don't think it's like that,' Tyra said softly.

 _'Then what is it like?'_ The voice sounded impatient, but there was also interest in it.

'If this is who we think it is, he comes from a place where the most important people were the ones with the most blood on their hands, right? I think he wanted to prove that he could be one of them.' She was almost whispering when she went on. 'Isn't that what Vikings were known for? Conquering and all. Their gods must've been like that, too, and Loki tried to take earth to prove he was worthy to be one of them.  
What we should do is make sure that he doesn't want to be part of that world anymore, and he won't be a threat, but we're not going to achieve that by lying to him.'

There was only silence at the other side of the line, and when it lasted for too long, Tyra softly asked, 'Deputy director Hill?'

Hill - a name that Loki didn't recognize - sighed. _'Don't call me that.'_

'You insist on calling me 'agent', so don't be a hypocrite.'

Another sigh. _'How are you going to make him believe he doesn't belong in Asgard without lying to him?'_

'I'll tell him the truth and make sure that he'll make good decisions for himself. He seems self-preserving. And if anything goes wrong, Freddy lives right outside and Clint is back for now, too. I'm pretty sure the three of us can take him. Just make sure Thor stays out of the way until we have a grip on Loki, or he’ll fall and break again.'

_'You know you can't take him. Now -'_

'Okay, so I'm going to ignore a direct order from you _and_ get these microphones out of my kitchen, but I could maybe make it up to you by taking you out for dinner Saturday night?'

_'Are you asking -'_

'Yes I am. I'll text you the when and where later. Bye!'

Loki could hear the faint tap of Tyra's fingers on the screen of her cell phone and then she opened the door again, stuffing the thing in her pocket.

'Sorry about that,' she said with a smile, pulling out a chair from under the table and dragging it towards a cupboard so that she could reach the highest shelve. She took out a cookbook and then walked over to a shelve at the other side of the room to pick up a chicken-shaped statue. She set them down on the table next to Loki and then turned back to the counter, on which she had already laid out butter, milk and eggs. 'I'll make the pancakes while you disable the mics, okay? The first one is in the first 'a' of 'Ramsay' on the book's spine and the other one is in the chicken's right eye. Just scratch them of and crunch them with your fingernails.'

Loki carefully slid of the table and onto on a chair, noticing that his strength was starting to return. While they both set to work, and also after that, while they ate pancakes and oranges and drank milk, Tyra told him 'everything she knew' and he added the bits and pieces that were slowly but surely starting to come back to him. By the time she was done he had learned that she was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and he an Asgardian deity. She told him about the three times he had come to earth that she knew of, about the Chitauri and the Avengers and about Thor and he told her about everything he remembered from Asgard and even a thing or two about the other Realms.

Tyra stood up when she was done talking. 'I'll go get you some proper clothes from Freddy, okay? You stay here.' She gently touched his shoulder before she left the kitchen. Seconds later another door fell shut and he knew he was alone for now. She had left to let him process everything and he was grateful for it, because the tears that came were humiliating even when no one could see them.

He didn't know how long he sat there, crying and trembling all over. Eventually he ran out of tears and reasons to cry, and all he could think of was Thor, about whom he barely remembered anything while everything else was almost fully clear. 

He knew that it was Thor that had done this to him, but he wouldn't make the mistake of holding grudges again. He had fought for vengeance before, but he was tired of war and bloodshed, tired of hurting people and trying to prove he was worth more than how he had been treated before. And thereby, he had deserved all of it, what Thor had done to him probably _had been_ revenge and now that debt was paid, the balance restored.

By swiping his memory, Thor had offered him a chance to be someone else. Not Odison or Laufeyson, not Aesir or Frostgiant, just a human, a puny, meaningless person that no one would ever notice. Maybe if he became that, he didn't have to be Loki anymore. He didn't have to be unhappy all the time and get hurt by everyone who once pretended to be his friend and be weighed down by his past for the rest of his life. He was free, thanks to Thor.

There was a soft knock on the door. 'Hey, Loki,' Tyra said softly. 'Freddy's with me. Can we come in?'

'Of course, it's your home,' Loki said weakly as he wiped his eyes.

The door opened and a dark-haired man wearing thick-rimmed glasses was standing behind Tyra. He was scratching his neck and avoiding looking at Loki, but before anyone could say something, the door at the other side of the living room (Loki could make out a television and a comfortable-looking couch behind the pair in the doorway) flew open again. 

'I don't know what you did this time, Ty, but I thank you for it. I was getting lectured by Melinda and suddenly Hill barged in and told me to come check on you guys immediately. Well, Mel wasn't exactly - _Oh._ ’ Clint backed away when he saw Loki sitting at the table. ‘Oh, of course, that explains a lot. Do I need to get my gun or are we befriending the bad guy again? You remember last time we did that, right? It was a bad fucking idea. It was a terrible idea.'

'It was _your_ idea,' Tyra deadpanned, perfectly calm.

'That's not the point. The point is that I'm not gonna sit around and wait for this guy to tap that spear against my chest again. And also I'm taking back my thanks. This guy made -'

Tyra was pulling Clint back into the living room, muttering 'Don't make a scene, princess.' as Freddy shut the door behind her. 

He walked over to the fridge and got out the leftovers of the pancakes. Then he sat down opposite Loki at the table and started eating. 'Don't mind Clint,' he said between bites. 'He won't forget, but he'll forgive, eventually. He's done a lot worse than what you made him do. The thing is that he didn't do any of _that_ against his will. If he notices you're not looking for that kind of control anymore, you'll be fine. Just give it some time.'

Loki looked up from his dirty hands at those last words. 'You mean that I'm staying here?'

'If you want to. Ty doesn't have a roommate, so you'll get the whole second bedroom for yourself. Also S.H.I.E.L.D. won't bother you too much if you stick with us, though I'm sure you can shake them of on your own just fine. It's just easier if you don't have to worry about it all the time, you know. We'll have your back. Even Clint will in time.'

'I've killed hundreds of people... How can you be so eager to trust me?'

'Almost everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. has gone through shit in their past. The whole organization is built on second chances, and I actually believe you deserve one. You've got good in you, you know. I can see it in your eyes. Of course that doesn't mean I won't make you pay if you hurt anyone, I just don't think you will.' Freddy sounded so calm that Loki barely caught the threat. The man smiled at him and patted his hand. 'There's a stack of clothes for you on the sofa, and the bathroom is at the other side of the hallway. I'll show you.'

He stood up and Loki followed him through the living room, where Tyra was hugging a protesting Clint and muttering something in his ear. Loki could hear it from where he was standing - his hearing was better than he'd expected - but they were probably talking about him (the him from _before_ all this), so he tried not to listen. It didn't help.

'- of Thor.'

'Wait, wait, wait. How can you be so sure they were in love?', Clint asked, leaning back a bit.

Loki shut the door of the bathroom behind him after Freddy had handed him the clothes and shown the way, but he could still hear Tyra say, 'I once met them when I was still in high school and after New York I went for coffee with Thor. Every move they make around each other, everything they say _screams_ 'in love'. It would make more sense, too. Thor is a king in his realm and Loki did the things he did to prove that he was worthy of Thor. 'You lack conviction,’ isn't that what Phil said? Well maybe he wasn't convicted enough because he wasn't interested in conquering earth. Is was just means to an end.'

'And you think that end was Thor?'

A silence fell, and Loki only realized then that he had just been standing there, listening. He turned on the shower and, if they said anything else, he didn't hear it.

-

After the shower, Loki still felt shaky, mostly because he had had to pull of the bandages from his shoulder and expose the wound to hot water. 

He did feel a little better now that there wasn't any blood underneath his fingernails and his cheeks weren't sticky with tears. His head still ached a little and the wound, that was healing quickly, throbbed, but the clothes were soft and when he walked out of the bathroom, Tyra showed him to a bedroom with the most comfortable bed he had ever touched.

She re-bandaged his wound and tucked hi in. He fell asleep almost right away, but before that, when his eyes had already fallen shut and he wasn't thinking all that much anymore, he said one final thing. Tyra, who was sitting beside him and softly stroking his hair, bent closer to listen.

'I barely remember anything about Thor, like I only met him once or twice.' His voice broke and Tyra whispered something, but he was already asleep.

-

When he awoke, it was dark outside and Clint was perched on a chair beside his bed, wide awake. He looked at Loki when the latter moved to a sitting position, waiting for Clint to say something.  
For a long time, Clint didn't speak, but then he sighed and started in a soft voice, 'I won't forgive you.' He looked away as he went on, leaning his head against the wall behind him. 'It seems reasonable enough to protect you, with the amnesia and all, so I will, but don't expect me to go any further than that. I'm not your friend. I can barely look at you without wanting to hurt you.'

Loki smiled weakly. 'I guess that's already more than I deserve.'

Clint stood up and walked away, but hesitated at the door. 'Do you still have magic?'

'I don't know. I haven't tried anything yet.'

Clint turned around and walked back to the chair, something strange in his eyes.

'Try something now, then. Anything.' He sat down.

Loki frowned, but lifted his hand and concentrated. A pale orange flame blazed to life in his palm, turning the room into a sea of warm light and dancing shadows. He closed his hand after only a moment, already feeling his power draining away.

Clint still had that strange look in his eyes. 'Do you think you could give me a dreamless sleep? Make the nightmares go away?', he asked, sounding young and hopeful.

Loki thought for a moment and then nodded, bending forward to put a hand on Clint's forehead. He closed his eyes, ignoring Clint's obvious unease at the contact. It only took him a few seconds, but when he opened his eyes again, he was more tired than he had been before he went to bed. 'If you go to sleep now, you won't dream of anything at all.'

Clint didn't look at Loki when he thanked him, but it was a start. He told him goodnight when he stood up and walked towards the door and Clint turned around to smile hesitantly at him and do the same.

-

After that Clint came by almost every night, asking Loki for the same small favour every time, but doing so in an increasingly friendly manner as the days went by. Sometimes he stayed to talk and he looked at Loki more often, which meant that they were both making progress.

During the days, Tyra explained modern society to Loki and a little later, with an alias, fake documents and some slight changes to his appearance to make him less recognizable, he applied to the nearest college to study psychology.

-

One night, after Clint had softly closed the door behind himself and Loki was alone again, he realized with a smile that everything was going to be okay. Everything already _was_ okay. He had friends he loved and trusted and a place to call home. 

And that was what orange stood for, now and always: the fire crackling in the hearth on the evenings the four of them came together in Freddy and Clint's apartment to make Loki watch every minute of Start Trek there was in the universe, because Tyra insisted it was basic knowledge; the overly bright colour of Tyra's kitchen, where Freddy, Ty and him had breakfast every morning; the memories of Helheim - of the good days, when all of his children were still alive and Sygin hadn't left him yet - that came back to him in his sleep…

Orange was the colour of home, and Loki had finally found it.


End file.
